As the global economy and the demands of technological sophistication continue to change the workplace it becomes increasingly more important to understand, appreciate and better communicate with co-workers and other employees or managers. The management of human relationships and the appreciation of relating one's personality style to another is crucial to success in business, as well as in the management of all personal and professional relationships, today. There is a need to create and foster an environment that results in greater productivity and increased positive morale for everyone in an organization. There is also a need for improved relationships with external clients and customers. Hopefully, increased employee satisfaction leads to increased customer satisfaction.
There are various testing methods to provide analysis of personality and behavior. Life Styles Inventory (LSI1) by Human Synergistics® (Plymouth, Mich.) identifies 12 behaviors or styles. After a series of questions are answered and tabulated, the results are graphed into polar coordinate sheet called a LSI circumplex. This requires testing in advance and waiting for results to be tallied and the graph to be prepared. This can't be done in real-time such as in a team building meeting. Additionally, these tests are forced choice, which potentially eliminates certain sets of personality temperaments.
The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Profile is another tool for personality identification. The subject is required to answer a battery of questions. The questions are tallied and graphed on a line graph. The graph has traits on the x axis. The y axis illustrates the percentage of which the person tested illustrates that trait. 100 percent indicating the trait and zero percent indicating the trait opposite. Again, advance testing is required before any team-building exercise or interpretation can take place.
The Benziger Thinking Styles Assessment (BTSA) helps identify the mode of thinking most productive for the person tested. The BTSA identify Extroversion and Interversion following the work of Dr. Carl Jung.
As early as 1923, Dr. Carl Jung, considered the founder of contemporary psychological type and temperament, set the foundation for classifying personality and behavior styles in his book Psychological Type (Harcourt & Brace, 1923). Jung's work developed those theories of differing systems and analyses into what is known today as personality type and temperament. Jung had come to believe that all people are different in fundamental ways although they all have the same multitude of instincts driving them from within. What seemed to be most important, he said were the psychological preferences for how we function. Dr. Jung also developed the theory of Shadow Energy. Psychologists, Kretschner and Spranger, contemporaries of Jung, also attempted to classify personality types, but neither made the impact of Carl Jung. In his research Jung also studied the ancients from the East and the West. He used the writings of Hippocrates and Plato and others to begin his study.
As Jung believed, extraverts prefer to process their understanding of the world externally. They draw energy from outside, from the external world of people, activities and things. Introverts prefer to process their understanding of the world internally. They prefer to draw energy from their inner world of ideas, emotions, and impressions.
Shadow energy, Jung taught, is the negative and/or hidden or rejected side of personality. Everyone has a shadow. If we fail to recognize our shadow it may, as Jung suggested, control us and may show up in our lives in the form of addictions, compulsions or other destructive behaviors.
Following Jung's work, Isabel Briggs-Myers and David Keirsey have greatly contributed to the understanding of the psychology of personality.
Isabel Briggs-Myers, along with her mother, Katherine Briggs, following the Jungian psychological concepts, developed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a forced choice instrument. The Myers-Briggs system classifies personality into sixteen different types. It is widely used in many environments today, from within the corporate climate to educational institutions and by professionals engaged in counseling, education, consulting and/or training.
David Keirsey developed The Keirsey Temperament Model—utilizing the four personality temperaments: the Artisan, the Guardian, the Idealist and the Rational. Keirsey's work is widely known and popularized through, Please Understand Me, Please Understand me II, and Portraits of Temperament. (www.keirsey.com).
Don Lowry, a student of Keirsey, then used the temperament model to develop a system called True Colors® Communications Group (Bermuda Dunes, Calif.). Lowry's system uses four colors—Blue, Green, Orange and Gold, to designate personality types and behavior styles. Dr. Roger W. Birkman also developed a system, in 1951, which used colors as a metaphor for Carl Jung's four personality types. Dr. Birkman's system is described in his book True Colors, (www.birkman.com)
The MBTI, Benziger Thinking Styles Assessment (BSTA) (www.beziger.org), Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis, and the Herman Brain Dominance Instrument are well known in the personality testing field in which specific groupings of characteristics are identified with four basic personality styles.
These models led to development of personality testing to help an individual to determine a proper vocation or to further understand his or her own motivations or feelings. Testing and use of the results have been increasingly used in the business world.
Determining and identifying personality types and temperament per the above models normally involves providing an individual with a battery of tests having the individual answer a series of questions relative to certain broad categories of activities, emotions, motivations or goals. The individual's responses are then correlated and a general personality pattern is identified, and placed in presentation form for counseling, team building and other such activities. Most of the models reported above use a forced choice questionnaire that eliminates, for some individuals, an accurate profiling of their personality. In these models the tabulation process is extremely onerous and time-consuming, and may lead to loss of motivation by the subject. This form of assessment increases anxiety for many individuals.
Furthermore, access to such a battery of tests presents a personal security problem. For example, the detailed answers provided by an individual in an employment environment might provide fellow employees or the employer itself with information needed to manipulate the individual. The detail answers may provide information on the individual's fears and concerns and on what “hot buttons” to use to control the individuals behavior.
Therefore, the need arises for an apparatus and method to provide an easy “user-friendly” real-time personality testing, evaluation and presentation that is also secure from abuse.